AHIP's phony epiphany
Insurers’ commitment to healthcare reform is only skin-deep
The industry claims to have had a change of heart, but its position hasn’t changed at all.
By Michael Hiltzik
Los Angeles Times
March 9, 2009
In December, the industry’s trade group, AHIP (for America’s Health Insurance Plans) revealed that it had experienced an epiphany and decided for the first time to support the principle of universal healthcare — insuring everyone in America, regardless of health condition.
It described its change of heart as the product of three years of sedulous soul-searching by AHIP’s board of directors, who claimed to have “traveled the country and engaged in conversations about healthcare reform with people from all walks of life.”
As a connoisseur of health insurance lobbying practices, however, I withheld judgment until I could scan the fine print. What I found by reading AHIP’s 16-page policy brochure was that its position hadn’t changed at all. Its version of “reform” comprises the same wish list that the industry has been pushing for decades.
Briefly, the industry wants the government to assume the cost of treating the sickest, and therefore most expensive, Americans. It wants the government to clamp down hard on doctors’ and hospitals’ fees. And it wants permission to offer stripped-down, low-benefit policies freed from pesky state regulations limiting their premiums.
… AHIP Chief Executive Karen Ignagni (told) the Obama summit: “You have our commitment to play, to contribute and to help pass healthcare reform this year.”
Ignagni can afford to be gracious because no specific reform plan is yet on the table. But veterans of the last reform battle warn that the moment concrete proposals appear, the insurance industry will deploy in force to kill anything that threatens its profitability and freedom of movement, such as an expansion of public insurance programs or tighter federal regulations.
Veterans of earlier healthcare battles justly wonder if the industry is merely trying to get in front of the parade, the better to lead it into a dead end.
“It might be that they think reform is inevitable,” says (Jonathan Oberlander, a healthcare reform expert at the University of North Carolina), observing that the industry made very similar noises at the outset of the Clinton effort, before the slaughter started. “I’d say buyer beware. We’ve been there before with them.”
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik9-2009mar09,0,4220704.column
And…
In Divide Over Health Care Overhaul, 2 Major Unions Withdraw From a Coalition
By Robert Pear
The New York Times
March 6, 2009
Two labor unions have pulled out of a broad coalition seeking agreement on major changes in the health care system. The action, by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the Service Employees International Union, shows the seeds of discord behind the optimistic talk at a White House conference on health care this week.
The most active participants in the coalition include Karen M. Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group, and Billy Tauzin, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which represents drug companies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/07/us/politics/07health.html?ref=washington
Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
In December, when America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) released their new report indicating that they were fully committed to reform that would cover everyone, I responded in a Quote of the Day (12/4/08) with the following: “You could not possibly describe a proposal that would better serve the interests of the private insurance industry. They would create a standard of underinsurance, require all of us to purchase their products, and pretend to address affordability issues through tax credits.”
Michael Hiltzik has provided for us a great service by actually reading AHIP’s report - carefully. He confirmed that this industry, which has been so destructive to health care reform efforts in the past, hadn’t changed its position at all.
Yet Washington has rolled out the red carpet for Karen Ignagni, AHIP’s president. She appears at almost every forum on reform and is presented with the microphone with some fanfare, even if she was not scheduled in the agenda. The intensity of the efforts to keep the private insurance industry in control of the process might best be exemplified by President Obama’s Health Care Summit. In closing remarks, President Obama handed the microphone off to Karen Ignagni so that she could express for the national audience AHIP’s phony epiphany.
Robert Pear’s report on the split in a major coalition on reform exposes the sharp contrast between AHIP’s sick-sweet public rhetoric on cooperation, and its back-stabbing, cut-throat, behind-the-scenes negotiations on the specifics of reform.
AFSCME and SEIU, the two unions that pulled out of the negotiations, serve as a proxy that represents the only special interest that really matters - the patients. After half a year of intensive negotiations with AHIP, PhRMA, the United States Chamber of Commerce, and others, it was clear that the insurance industry would not compromise its business interests for the benefit of patients. AFSCME and SEIU had to walk out.
The coalition plans to issue recommendations later this month in a report that reflects “the lowest common denominator,” undoubtedly more sick-sweet rhetoric crafted by AHIP.
(Theoretically the consumers were represented by Ronald Pollack of Families USA, but he has lost all credibility because of his years of insistence that we follow a strange-bedfellows strategy - a process which tragically has only perpetuated health reform inertia. Jonathan Oberlander cautions that “we’ve been there before with them,” but Ronald Pollack’s learning curve is flat. )
Michael Hiltzik is to be praised for his leadership. We can only hope that other influential members of the media follow his example. All they need to do is carefully read AHIP’s own report on its change of heart, and see what it really says. (Hint: I couldn’t find a heart anywhere in the report.)
AHIP’s phony epiphany:
http://www.americanhealthsolution.org/assets/Uploads/healthcarereformproposal.pdf